


Anything You Can Do

by Escalus



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Talia Hale, Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Canonical Character Death, Fix-It, Gen, Light Angst, Meta, Minor Character Death, Missing Scene, Teaching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:41:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26670826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Escalus/pseuds/Escalus
Summary: Laura was being raised to be the next alpha.  Tonight, she learns about the limitation of an alpha's ability to protect her family and deliver justice, when Talia tells her about what happened to Paige.
Relationships: Laura Hale & Talia Hale
Comments: 8
Kudos: 15
Collections: Laura Hale Appreciation Week 2020





	Anything You Can Do

Laura sat on the couch with her legs folded up under her. It had taken over an hour to get comfortable enough in order to read. Her Women’s Studies textbook lay open, and she should have long been done with this chapter, but she had to admit it was all a ruse. She only had eyes for the most recent episode of _Desperate Housewives._

She was aware of the irony. She imagined her professor scowling over the top of her glasses.

If she had wanted to get the work done, Laura should have stayed on campus this weekend. She had a lot of reading to do and she didn’t need the distractions of home. But Berkeley was a little under three hours away and with three other important Californian packs visiting, she needed to be here to support her mother. And, as her mother incessantly pointed out, handling an important meeting of the packs was an important skill to learn.

Laura would rather figure out what Bree Van de Kamp was going to do now.

She closed the book, marking the page, giving up the pretense of reading. Instead, during a commercial break, she decided to see if anyone else was around. She would bother one of her family to watch the show with her.

Living in a house with a family of werewolves ultimately meant that you were seldom alone. By closing her eyes and letting her senses expand, she easily found that Cora and the other children were all asleep by now. Dad was in the study, typing away at his computer, getting some paperwork done. Aunt Penny was doing laundry in the basement. Uncle Frederick wasn’t home; he had gone on a business trip and wouldn’t be back until next week. He had offered to cancel it when he heard the other packs were coming, but Mom had insisted she could handle Deucalion, Ennis, and Kali without him.

She had no idea where Mom, Peter or Derek were at the time. That, in itself, was odd. They should be home by now.

At the end of the episode, her sense of responsibility kicked back in. She turned off the television, turned on the new album by Ani DiFranco, and cracked open her textbook once more. Part of her workload was a ten-page paper due in two weeks on the difficulties of reform. She had to select a real-world issue concerning women, propose how to correct it, explain the drawbacks of and obstacles to that proposal, and then argue why the benefits would outweigh the costs.

She had finally managed to immerse herself in the chapter on the intersectionality between women’s issues and racial issues when the front door opened and ruined her focus. She didn’t have to look up to know it was Mom and Derek. Sighing in frustration, she was about to flip the page and try to regain her rhythm when the overwhelming scent of misery reached her nose. She jerked her head back to look at the two of them. 

“What’s wrong?” 

Neither of them answered her. Instead, Derek kept walking with his face fixed firmly on the ground; it was lucky he didn’t run straight into the wall. Talia put a hand on his shoulder when he reached the bottom of the stairs, bringing him to a temporary halt. 

“Derek.” Talia’s voice was soft but commanding. He looked up at her. “It’s going to be all right. Go on upstairs to your room. I’ll bring you something to eat.” His face fell once again, though he stayed motionless until Talia gave him a gentle push to get him to start moving. Her mother watched her brother reach the top of the staircase and then disappear around the corner. She sighed, pulling her shawl around here even though the house was a comfortable temperature.

“Mom?”

Talia had taken a few steps toward the kitchen but she paused at Laura’s question. She looked tired, more tired than an alpha her age should look. “Come with me.” 

Laura didn’t ask twice or hesitate to move. She followed her mother into the kitchen to find Talia momentarily resting her head against the freezer door. Taking a deep breath, her mother straightened up and began pulling things from the cupboards.

“What happened?”

“Did Derek tell you about his girlfriend?”

“Of course not. Boys his age don’t tell their older sisters anything. I knew he had one, though. I think her name is Paige.”

“She died tonight.”

“Oh, God.” Poor Derek. He was so sensitive, and he had been stupid about her in the way only teenage boys could be stupid about love.

“Ennis Bit her and the Bite didn’t take.” Talia opened up a bag of Wonder bread with a little too much force and the slices fell over the counter. “I’ve told you that it happens, but I haven’t told you the details of what occurs when it does happen. It’s painful and almost always fatal.” 

“Is she dead?” Laura clenched her teeth over the stupid question. When her mother didn’t answer, she pushed on. “Did they take her to the hospital? How are we going to explain that?”

“No. We don’t have to worry about any of that.” Talia had reassembled the loaf. Her hands were trembling. “Derek killed her. Out of mercy.”

Laura felt the floor wobble under her feet, but it turned out to be only her own legs. She put a hand over her mouth to keep sound from escaping. 

“Peter is out there right now staging the body. He’ll pass it off an animal attack.” Her mother went on, forcing the words from her mouth as if they hurt to say. She pulled a Tupperware bowl from the refrigerator and put it on the counter with deliberate slowness. “It’ll take a few days to find the body, and by then the scavengers will help hide the evidence.”

Laura swallowed down bile. If she couldn’t see the effect it was having on her mother, if she wasn’t able to smell the remorse, then she would have thought they were mobsters with the easy way they talked about getting rid of a body. Her mind reeled. She couldn’t imagine Derek being forced into doing such a thing. It took all her will not to run up to his bedroom immediately.

She needed to refocus on something else to keep her mind off her brother. The truth made an excellent distraction.

“Why would Ennis do such a thing? I know he lost a beta recently to the Argents, and I expected him to attack them in a rage and get himself killed. But why would he bite a teenager? Who happened to be Derek’s …” Laura trailed off. Something occurred to her. Something horrible.

Talia popped off the bowl’s lid and then stood, as if frozen, staring at the turkey salad inside. “Derek asked him to.”

 _“What.”_ Laura had already come to that conclusion, but she rejected it. She pushed it away. Why would her little brother even think of doing something like that?

Her mother finally turned away from the sandwich fixings to look at her. There was no missing the emotional exhaustion that this exquisite turmoil had wrought in her alpha. Even as she stared, Laura’s empathy soured as the one inevitable thought was followed by another. 

“No, he didn’t.” Her eyes glowed as her heart beat fast. “Ennis would never do such a thing on Derek’s say so alone. There had to be an adult involved.”

“Laura—“ Talia said her name like a sigh.

“Ennis might be angry at the death of his beta, but he’s not stupid. He wouldn’t even consider such a request unless someone else assured him that it wouldn’t piss you off too much. That it would put you in his debt.” Laura turned away and clenched her first. “That bastard.”

“He’s your uncle, Laura.”

“Well my uncle is a schemer. My uncle is a loose cannon. Oh, he’s fun, I’ll give you that. He tells the best stories, but in the end, how many times have you had to clean up his messes, Mom? How many times have you had to personally get involved in order to fix something or someone he broke playing his little games? You have to do something about him!”

“Do what about me?” Peter asked from the doorway to the kitchen. Laura had been so angry she hadn’t sensed his presence. Now she was even angrier, because she was also embarrassed.

“Have you neutered so you’ll stop pissing on the carpet!” Laura sneered at him. Most of the time, she liked Peter. Most of the time. The rest of the time she wanted to wipe the smirk off his face with her fists.

“Laura!” Talia’s voice sounded far away.

Peter regarded her serenely, as if he were completely innocent of everything Laura was thinking about him. In fact, he affected an arch disdain, as if she was a silly little girl. 

“I mean it, Mom. Look at him. He’s thirty-four, but both of us know how much energy he spends keeping himself looking like a young twenty-four so he can get away with his bullshit. Why don’t you get a job instead?”

“Laura, sweetheart, you’re obviously upset.” Peter began, soothingly. “I can assure you, when I helped Derek out with his concerns about his relationship, I couldn’t possibly have predicted this outcome.”

“His … concerns?” She could feel his fangs dropping.

“You know teenage boys.” Peter tried to continue his nonchalance. “Convinced that their first infatuation is their great love, romantic to the point of absurdity. Obsessed to the point of foolishness. I’m not surprised—“

“Enough.” Talia brought her fist down on the counter. “Peter. Be somewhere else. Don’t come back to the house until I send for you.”

Peter opened his mouth to reply but Talia’s eyes blazed forth in their brilliant red. Thinking better of whatever he had been about to say, he turned and stalked out. Laura waited until she was sure he was far enough away that he wouldn’t overhear. She decided to wait for the front door to shut, for his car to start, and for him to drive away.

“As I was saying, you have to do something about him.”

“Do I?” Her mother’s voice was soft, but it was the type of softness that made her children tremble.

“You really think that Derek – _our Derek_ – would do something outrageous like try to arrange for his human girlfriend to get the Bite from an outside alpha without someone suggesting it to him? Peter gets away with these things all the time.”

Talia went back to making the sandwich.

“You’re the one who told me to keep an eye out for Corinne Sepuvelda. And don’t think I don’t know you search the woods near the Tate car crash site every chance you get when Peter’s out of town.”

When Talia turned around, she was smiling. “I supposed I should be proud you noticed these things.”

“Why do you put up with him?”

Talia’s smile faded. “He’s my brother.”

“So?”

“Peter was the baby of the family. I’m ten years older than him. We were always rich. Always influential. You were born when he was fourteen. He was firmly stuck between generations, with no great need for another son. He can’t see a role for himself here.” Talia said sadly. “We’re happy and peaceful. He is at loose ends.”

“Maybe he should do something like get a job?”

“Working to not be bored hardly tends to be satisfying. I won’t insist that he labor to keep him out of trouble.” Talia explained. “While he’s done many things that make me want to tear my hair out, in the end, he’s pack. He belongs here, with us.”

“So what are you going to do now?”

“I’m going to take this sandwich and a glass of milk to Derek.”

“That’s not what I was talking about.”

Talia turned away to get a glass out of the cupboard.

“A girl is dead!”

“I know that, Laura.”

“A girl is dead and you’re making one of the people responsible for it a chicken salad sandwich!” Laura shouted. “Are you going to cut the crusts off for him?”

“What do you want me to do, Laura? Turn him over to the police?”

“Yes!” Laura shouted. Her mother’s brows came together in thunderous disapproval. 

“He’s your brother.”

“Holding someone responsible for their actions doesn’t mean you don’t love them, Mom.”

Talia chewed on the inside of her lip. Laura recognized her tell. She was trying to master her emotions. Her mother never lost control of her emotions – unless she absolutely wanted to. That was when you had to be careful.

“Mom, you’re the one who told me that we can’t hold ourselves separate from the rest of the world. We’ve got to be part of this city and humanity, or all of our gifts, our nature, don’t mean anything. We might as well move up into the mountains and start breeding with each other.”

Talia raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t put it in those terms.”

“No, but that’s my point. We have to hold ourselves to the same standards as other people, or we might as well be that twisted.”

“Your brother isn’t twisted.” Talia’s voice was firm. “He made a mistake.”

“A mistake is when you accidentally leave some tinfoil on some food you put in the microwave or when you leave the television on all night. This was a crime.”

“It was a mistake. His intent was to protect her.” Talia raised her hand. 

“In that Women’s Studies course you’re paying for, I’ve been reading all about how men choose to protect women’s bodies against their will. It’s an expression of power, a way to shape the world into how you want it to be by exerting control over someone other than yourself.” Laura gestures to the living room. “I can go get the text book and read to you from it.”

“I’m not handing your brother over to the police, no matter what you say. I’ll find some way for him to learn his lesson.” 

“Will you?” Laura couldn’t figure out why she was so bitter. “What about Paige’s family?”

“They’ll believe their daughter died due to an animal attack. An unfortunate accident.”

“How is that justice?”

“It’s not justice, Laura.” Talia’s voice is soft. “There will be many times as alpha where you will be confronted with this simple truth: sometimes there are no good answers. As alpha, the pack is my first priority, as it will be yours. Placing Derek in the criminal justice system with what he just endured, with blue eyes looking back at him from the mirror at every opportunity? That wouldn’t be good for Derek or for anyone else in there with him. As unsatisfying and unfair as it might be, the pack is where he belongs.”

 _“And.”_ Talia took a few steps to Laura. “It’s where I want him to be. I have responsibilities, but I also have privileges. You don’t get one without the other, Laura. When you are alpha, you will learn this. Sometimes you get what you want. Anyone who tries to tell you different is using you for their own ends.”

“Can I be mad at him?”

“I’m mad at Derek, too, but I hope you love him, just as I do.”

Laura nodded. She did love Derek, no matter how angry she was with him. “What about Peter?” 

“What _about_ Peter?”

For a moment, she thought that her mother was trying to blow her off again, but Laura realized, she was asking for her opinion. “He’s not fifteen. He may not have intended this, but his fingerprints are all over it.”

“I agree. What do you think we should do?”

Laura hesitated. Peter was her uncle, but he had demonstrated a willingness to risk family in his games. “There’s not much we can do.”

“No, there really isn’t. He is not a child. He has his own money. I could make him an omega.”

“No.” Laura bit her lip.

“Why not?”

“Because … because he’s still family no matter how much that doesn’t really seem to matter to him.”

“Okay, then what should we do instead?” Talia asked. As much as this talk had calmed Laura down, it had also been good for her mother. 

“Make him age.”

Talia scrunched up her face.

“He’s walks around looking like he’s twenty-four. Make him look his real age. That’ll curtail some of his worst games. He won’t be able to hang around the high school anymore.”

“That sounds fair.” Talia nodded. “It’s also forward thinking which is what I like to see from you. Instead of just punishment, it’s also prevention.”

“Thank you. I wish we could do more. I wish we could fix him.”

“You can’t fix people, Laura. If I teach you anything, that’s the most important thing you could learn from all of this. You can support them when they need help. You can enforce boundaries when you have to. But no skill at leadership, no amount of love, no secret magic can change a person from what they are unless they want to change.”

Laura looked down at the floor of the kitchen. 

“Do you think if I could find a way, I wouldn’t turn Peter into someone who could be happy with all that he has now? If I knew a trick to erase the burden that Derek is going to have to carry for the rest of his life, I wouldn’t do it in an instant? All I can do is watch Peter and hope he decides to change on his own. All I can do is help Derek deal with what he did.”

“What about Ennis?”

“Again, there’s nothing much I can do. Derek asked him to Bite her. The custom is not to Bite others against their will, but it isn’t a law. We don’t have laws.”

Outrage surged to the tip of Laura’s tongue. “This is our town, which we protect.”

“It’s our town to protect, but we don’t own it. We’re not going to act like it’s our territory; we’re not a mob family. I don’t have any more authority here than the baker down the street to enforce my family’s customs. On the other hand, if I knew what he was going to do ahead of time, I would have stopped him. What’s done is done.”

“So they all get away with it.”

“I didn’t say that,” Talia responded. “I will make sure that everyone understands what Ennis did, how angry I am about it, and that he’s not welcome in my presence.”

“Wheeee.” Laura spun her finger in the air.

“Laura, it’s the best I can do. Unless I’m willing to go to war, it’s the best I can do and, given what happened to Deucalion, that is not a feasible plan right now.”

Deucalion had been blinded in an ambush by Gerard, whom he had met on neutral ground. Marco, one of his betas, had tried to kill the peaceful alpha, and Deucalion had torn him apart in return. Talia had tried to get the injured alpha to stay with the Hale Pack until he got back on his feet, but Deucalion had refused. That had been _the day before yesterday._ Gritting her teeth, Laura turned away from her mother. “I don’t know how you manage to do it. All the other mothers your age have enough trouble having a career and getting dinner on the table, but you have to deal with things like this. And then to have your own family screw up this badly.”

“It’s easy, in a way. I love them.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Laura shrugged. “I don’t believe you. Not that you don’t love them, but I don’t believe it can be easy. You never seem to want to sit down with a pint of ice cream and say ‘this is going to be someone else’s problem.’ Don’t you get tired?”

Talia picked up the plate. “I do. Tonight, I am. But there’s always something that keeps me going, even in times like this, and I hope it keeps you going, too, when it’s your turn to be the alpha.”

“What could possibly make me content to clean up other people’s messes?”

“You tell yourself how much worse it would be for the people you love if you didn’t. If I tossed Derek into the street, wouldn’t it just make him more miserable than he is now? If I locked Peter in the basement, wouldn’t he just resent me more? Things can always get worse if someone stops caring.”

Talia walked out of the kitchen with the sandwich she’d made for Derek. Laura watched her leave. 

She had always admired her mother, even when she disagreed with her. But this, indeed, was the biggest thing on which she had ever disagreed. Three men had stolen this girl’s life because they felt empowered to make decisions for her. It’s everything she had read about in the book made shockingly real. It didn’t matter that two of them were members of her own family.

But her mother’s patience had reminded her of something. Derek was her brother, no matter what. Peter was her uncle, no matter what. She did love them, even though she had been so furious with their actions. She didn’t want to hurt them in the end.

She picked up the glass of milk her mother had left behind. Maybe she did have a lot to learn about being an alpha. She would start now. 

She took the glass to Derek’s room.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote the events happening with Paige and Deucalion happened in early February of 2005.


End file.
